The weekend after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids spoke to a gathering of volunteers prepared to knock on doors ahead of Kansas’ August vote on abortion rights.
At the time, campaigners and observers alike believed the vote — the first on abortion rights in the country — would be close. Davids, who was running unopposed in the Democratic primary, threw her political weight behind the vote-no effort.
Come Election Day, the effort paid off. Abortion rights won big and Democrats found hope that they could stave off losses in what was expected to be a good election year for Republicans.
Now, as Davids attempts to win her third term in Congress in a district that looks more conservative than the last time she ran, her campaign is hoping it can repeat the success of the vote-no effort.
“I think that the folks here recognize that, yes, August was a big win for Kansans, we pushed back on some pretty extreme attempts,” Davids told reporters Wednesday. “I think that people recognize it’s on the ballot again.”
To do so, her campaign will have to rely on young voters. Particularly young women.
Analysis of the electorate in August shows that win was driven in large part by historic turnout among young women.
Around 41% of women between 18 and 29 turned out to vote, a high number for a demographic that often does not vote, according to an analysis of data obtained from the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office, which excludes 12 counties that had not submitted their fully primary data by Oct. 7.
In the counties that compose the 3rd Congressional District — Johnson, Wyandotte, Anderson, Franklin and Miami — women made up 57% of the voters between 18 and 29, the highest proportion of women out of any age group in the August primary.
In Miami County, which voted for President Donald Trump in 2020 by 39.3 percentage points, young women made up 61% of the voters in their age group and had a 37% turnout rate, higher than women or men between the ages of 30 and 49.
“I think people realize that young people, especially young women, come out and vote when they’re extremely pissed off,” said Allie Utley, the vice president of the Kansas Young Democrats. “And so I think the primary election really just showed us that if we actually mobilize those voters, it will make the difference.”
Young voters typically vote at lower rates than their older counterparts. As a result, campaigns put few resources toward campaigning to them.
“I think from a political strategy perspective, if you’re a candidate who is banking your victory on younger people showing up in extraordinary numbers, and maybe even out voting their elders, that’s not a sound strategy,” said Patrick Miller, a political science professor at the University of Kansas. “Because I can’t tell you when that’s been done before.”
But, Miller added, that doesn’t mean that campaigns might not try to drive youth turnout to lessen the gap between younger and older voters, who typically vote more conservatively.
While candidates bring a set of complications that a vote on a single issue lacks, Tom Bonier, a national Democratic consultant with Target Smart, said the mere fact that this bloc turned out in August indicates they’ll be back in November.
“Simply put, voting is habitual,” Bonier said. “The best predictor of someone voting in any given election is them having voted in prior elections.”
While Davids, 42, has made abortion a key issue in her campaign — attacking her Republican opponent Amanda Adkins over her earlier stances to limit abortion rights — she’s also devoted her attention to climate issues and LGBTQ rights, two issues that often resonate with younger voters.
A climate-focused political action committee, called LCV Victory, has already spent more than $430,000 attacking Adkins on Davids’ behalf during the campaign.
Adkins, 47, has not necessarily ceded the young women vote. The mother of two high school-aged children, Adkins said she’s been focused on getting young voters engaged since the time she was a member of the College Republicans.
She’s run ads focused specifically on bringing more women into the workforce, as part of her larger message about the economy, even as unemployment remains low.
“I’ve been a professional, a working mother my entire life so it’s all about opportunities,” Adkins told The Star. “Opportunities in the workforce, a view forward to how and where we’re going to grow in the future and what path are we creating for young people to be successful.”
While the majority of the Millennial and Gen Z generations identify themselves as political independents, only about one in five adults under 41 identify as Republican, according to Gallup.
Patients between the ages of 20 and 29 made up the majority of abortions performed in Kansas last year, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
“Young people, young women are the ones who can get pregnant, just scientifically,” Utley said. “It’s their issue above anyone else’s. And so I think we’re going to really harness that anger and really make it a motivational, energized, movement going into Nov. 8.”
Are Kelly and Schmidt speaking to young women?
Davids’ approach feels distinct from the one taken by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and the Democratic Governors Association.
Kelly, who has to win over a much more conservative statewide electorate than Davids’ swing district in order to have a chance at winning, has focused on bolstering her “middle of the road” credentials, to the point where most of her television ads show her standing in the middle of a highway.
When talking about abortion, she’s stated plainly she agrees with the majority of Kansans that government has no place in private healthcare decisions.
Kelly’s campaign spokeswoman Madison Andrus pointed in a statement to work done by the Kansas Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign to mobilize voters on college campuses on issues beyond abortion.
“The Common Sense Kansas campus program includes nearly twenty organizing staff across eight Kansas campuses, who mobilize young voters and engage them on the issues important to young Kansans’ future – like freezing tuition rates, axing the food tax, building more affordable housing – which Governor Kelly got done, and expanding medicaid and legalizing medical marijuana, two of Governor Kelly’s top term two priorities,” Andrus said.
Schmidt is endorsed by Kansans for Life, the state’s main anti-abortion group, and as attorney general led challenges to the Kansas Supreme Court ruling that found the right to abortion in the state constitution. But he hasn’t promoted those positions in his campaigning. Instead he’s focused on education curriculum issues, crime and the economy.
“Derek and Katie’s positive vision for making daily life more affordable, putting parents and kids first in education, and building healthier and safer communities appeals to all Kansans,” Schmidt’s campaign manager C.J. Grover said in a statement.
Kansas Republican Party chairman Mike Kuckelman said the primary GOP issues this year — crime, border security and inflation — are ubiquitous.
“The messaging really isn’t any different on these issues, from my perspective, whether I’m dealing with an 18-year-old first time voter or a senior citizen who has voted for decades,” he said.
As Kelly keeps the abortion issue at an arms length, Planned Parenthood Great Plains is campaigning on abortion for her. The group’s political action committee is currently running an ad that puts her position on abortion front and center.
“We saw how motivating it was on Aug. 2nd because we won by a huge margin and we saw historic turnout for a primary election,” said Lauren Klapper, an organizer for the group. “I think it’s important for all campaigns to be talking about this issue, especially when they want to engage young voters and bring them out to the polls.”
As Democrats are enthused by the turnout, Republicans are struggling to figure out a new approach in the aftermath of their defeat on the ballot amendment.
Kris Van Meteren, a longtime GOP consultant, said November will help show what that path might be. While today’s young voters are motivated by abortion, it’s unclear if they’ll turn out for candidates or if this issue will define the generation of voters.
Rather than abandoning abortion as an issue, he said, advocates and candidates need to find a way to talk to young people about abortion in a way that focuses more on the mother and doesn’t come off quite as harsh as they did in the amendment fight.
“This is an issue that tends to affect young people more than old people,” he said. “There was nearly a tone-deafness to the emotional factors that drive this issue (ahead of the August vote).”
Mackenzie Haddix, a spokeswoman for Kansans for Life, said the “vote yes” campaign did campaign to young voters in “almost every medium” but that their message was hampered by fear stoked by the opposition.
She said the path forward will be in proving candidates that support few limits on abortion are “out-of-step.”
But, Grace Lauer, president of the Kansas Federation of College Republicans and a field organizer for the vote yes campaign, said she thinks her peers are tired of talking about abortion.
Ahead of the primary, Lauer said, the “no” side’s campaigning to young voters was obvious. The election was unavoidable on social media and Lauer was bombarded with texts from “vote no” campaigners, likely because of her age and gender.
But it remains clear that Republicans want to keep the focus in November on the economy, not abortion.
“For a really long time the thing that activated a younger voter base was the social issues and I don’t think it’s that way anymore, I think that college students struggle to pay for things — their job isn’t paying enough,” Lauer said. “Through Democratic leadership the prices keep increasing.”
McClatchy DC’s Ben Wieder contributed to this report.
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